The Stone in the River
by MungoJerry
Summary: Gather round and hear a tale of a man given a gift and a curse for his efforts. A broken hero that time forgot, a mysterious man gathering dust on an isolated island in the middle of the Sea, suddenly disturbed by those who would seek a Future...
1. The Sound of the Gong

A/N: After I finished Wind Waker I was like, "WAHHH! He sowed the seeds of the FUTURE!! WAHHH!" teary teary blah blah. Then I thought, what happened to Link the first? Then I got bored and I daydreamed and had some fun. I know that somone else has done something similiar to this, several people actually, about the Links meeting...I just want to let everybody know that this little story comes from my own inspiration, and not from them. (No offense.) :)~ Enjoy, my gracious reader, I hope. ^_^  
  
Disclaimer: No, I don't own Zelda. Happy? Yes?  
Ch. 1~ The Sound of the Gong  
  
As dawn approached, the sea appeared calm. Small waves gently lapped at the sides of two sturdy wooden ships while larger ones sent spray into the sky, sparkling in the weak light. It was the constantly moving surface of a slate and silver world, slowly changing into a rosey gold one, moving in powerful currents one might only see from very high up in the sky, beyond the clouds.  
  
Link watched as the faint stars disappeared one by one and the clouds became bright pink against a red-orange sky. This was his favorite time of the day. It was a reminder of the quest that he and his friends had taken upon themselves. The quest to find a new home. A place where their people could be one again. A future. His green hat moved a little in the sea breeze.  
  
He also considered it his own little pensive time, when he could reflect and absorb the peacefullness of the morning. His own little red boat, The Red Lion, was hitched to the side of the Pirates' boat, The Dragon's Shear. Link watched his boat bob up and down. It had been only three or four months since that boat could talk, then it had been the King of the Red Lions. He sighed.  
  
"Hoy! Red sky in the morning, sailor's warning!"   
  
"Wah!" Link felt himself nearly jump out of his skin and fall over as Tetra laughed like an intoxicated hyena and tried to keep her balance.   
  
She stood leaning over the railing, her sandaled feet sticking out over the sea through the bars, just a few feet away to his right, her blond hair up in a gravity defying danish high on her head, "You are WAY too easy to surprise! How DID you survive that trying time? I'm surprised you weren't eaten by something hiding in the bushes."  
  
"Uh huh, good morning to you too, Tetra. How do you do that?" Link responded, rubbing the back of his head and feeling a small blow to his pride that Tetra was able to sneak up on him without being noticed...  
  
"It's pretty easy to creep up on someone who isn't really there..." Tetra smiled mischieviously.  
  
"What do you mean not really-oh..." Understanding hit and he fell silent  
  
"Well," Tetra continued, "What are you thinking about Link? Where have you gone this fine moring?" She took her feet out of the railing and put her chin in her hand, arm on the rail, "If you don't want to tell me that's okay too."  
  
Link folded his arms and rested his head on their green sleeves, "Aw, it's okay. Nowhere really. I was just remembering the King...and what we set out to do." He squinted his eyes against the risen orange sun.  
  
"To answer your un-uttered question, yes, I think we can do it. And we won't give up until we've scoured every inch of the ocean!" To Link's surprise she leapt onto the railing and yelled out to the sea, "HEAR THAT FUTURE HOMELAND? YOU CAN'T HIDE!" Then Tetra turned to him again and winked, "Happy now?"  
  
Link stared for a moment in amazement, then broke into a joyful fits of laughter, "Good enough! Let's wake the others and get going..."  
  
Still standing on the rail, Tetra pointed to herself and said, "Hey! I'm still the captain of this ship, and I say when we should wake the others."  
  
"Fine then, when?"  
  
Tetra thought for a moment and then responded, "Now."  
  
"Okay," Link the Wind Waker, Hero to Many, grinned and ran to the ships giant gong. Tetra watched with satisfaction as he swung the big stick and some of her men nearly tumbled out of the crow's nest.  
  
"Oh, and Link..."  
  
Link set down the big stick and looked over, "Yeah?"  
  
"I meant what I said earlier."  
  
"I know you did, and I thankyou," Link was ready to jump down into his own boat when Tetra stopped him.  
  
"No no, not that," her red bandana whipped around in the growing Western wind, "I meant the 'Red skies in the morning, sailor's warning' part. We're going to have one heck of a storm soon and I want you to be careful, okay?"  
  
Link smiled a little, touched by Tetra's concerne and taken aback at the same time, "I will I will, don't you worry." He jumped down into his own little boat and prepared the sail.  
  
Tetra leaned over and yelled, "But I meant what I said about finding a new land too!"  
  
The two children readied their ships and prepared to set out for another day of seeking the land of their dreams.  
  
TO BE CONTINUED...tell me what you think! ^_^ 


	2. The Birds

A/N: Aiiee! O_O The waves of Link meets Link fanfics have begun to rise! ...must...fight...to be...ORIGINAL! And hope my own ideas aren't like those of others. x.x ...meh...I hope this fic isn't lost in the sea of other fics...oh, my I made a pun. Thankyou so much for your reviews!  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own Zelda and I'm making no money off of this fic. I'm also not trying to steal from Alfred Hitchcock!! Thankyou..  
  
Ch. 2- The Birds  
  
"Miss Tetra!" A small, ratty looking man leaned as far as he could out of the crow's nest of the Dragon's Shear, "MISS TEEETRAAA!"  
  
"I'm not deaf Niko!" The girl captain rubbed her sensitive hylian ears, glancing up at him in the noon sun, "What's your problem?"  
  
"I thought I saw something, Miss Tetra, on the horizon!" Niko, the omega in the pirate wolf-pack, positively glowed with the greatness of his achievment. This was certainly greater than what he had seen earlier, which had turned out to be an angry sperm whale. The boys had almost thrown him into the sea for his find, which he had thought to be mighty thunderous. And how was HE to have known it was a whale?  
  
Tetra didn't notice Niko's exctiement, fully absorbed in consulting some indecipherable ancient sea chart, "What is it Niko? Do you plan on feeding us to some squid next? Or maybe a giant gyorg? No, actually, hold that thought. I almost hope it is squid, then we can have calamari for dinner....I'm sick of rations-"  
  
"It's neither of those, Miss Tetra!" Tetra finally looked up at Niko, who was grinning like an idiot, or maybe a really happy one, a happy idiot that is.  
  
Tetra sighed and rolled up the map, carefully placing it in the back pocket of her white shorts, "Well then, Niko, what is it?"  
  
"It's SEAGULLS, Miss Tetra! Seagulls and pelicans!" Niko's eyes positively shone.  
  
  
  
"WHAT?!"  
  
***  
  
Link was caught off guard when Mako, the knowledgeable little man with strange glasses, called out to him. Link was riding the bow wave from the Dragon's Shear using the agilility of the little Red Lion, and he was having the time of his life. The sun smacked lambent light against the powerful slope of rushing deep green water and he was soaked to the skin with spray. It gave him an adrenaline rush to see the bow of his ship cutting the smooth swell of the water in two. They were going at a good speed with the wild western wind to their backs.  
  
Mako had to literally crawl out onto the ships gilded dragon figurehead to get Link's attention, and he nearly fell off too, "LINK!"  
  
Mako's cry made Link jump a bit, and he swiftly altered his course to make sure he wasn't crushed by the much more massive Dragon's Shear. That was twice today that someone had surprised him..! Link grumbled a little and dropped back to the side of the pirates' boat while Mako shimmied down the dragonhead, holding onto his glasses with one hand, and ran to the rail.  
  
"Hoy, Mako!" Link waved.  
  
"Link, Miss Tetra needs to see you right away! It appears that Niko has seen something again," Mako said, clearly annoyed, "I don't understand why we still keep him on this ship...he brings bad luck. Or some such muck."  
  
Link unwound his grapping hook and swung it easily up to Mako, who grabbed it and tied it to a greened metal ring attached to the rail. Link lowered the sail of his boat and scaled the rope, "Oh, he's not all that bad," Link said to Mako once he reached the top, climbing over the railing and hopping onto the main deck of the ship. The only reply he got from Mako was a disgruntled "Hmph," as he helped the rest of the crew bring down the sails.  
  
Tetra called out to him from the sun beaten crow's nest and he joined her up top, doing his best not to slip on the ladder. They could see ocean for miles in every direction and the ever ceaseless, strangely warm wind whipped their clothes and hair about. Niko stood next to Tetra as she looked to the sorthwest with a leather spyglass the crew had made for her. She didn't take her eyes off of the horizon when she handed it to Link and said quietly, "Look there..." pointing to the same direction as her gaze. Link, with a look that was the perfect mixture of excitement and fear, carefully took the telescope in his hands and brought it to his eye. To the west he saw storm clouds, stacked and dangerous looking, bobbing up and down with the movements of the ship...   
  
Link said slowly, "Tetra..."  
  
"Well??" She said, biting her lip.  
  
"...I don't see anything but storm clouds..."  
  
Tetra's eye twitched. "...a little to the left!"  
  
Link adjusted and she saw his jaw go slack, "...But that means..." He looked at her, and she nodded, grinning. He looked out again and Tetra was still nodding, not really able to believe it herself. Niko hopped from one foot to the other in anticipation.  
  
***  
  
  
  
The pirate crew of the Dragon's Shear crowded around the foot of the crow's nest, whispering doubtfully and casting glances upward.  
  
Senza sniffed loudly and wiped his nose. "We should have thrown the little rat into the jaws of that fish when we had the chance!" The big, burly man was leaning against the main column of the crow's nest. The rest of the men; Gonzo, Nudge, Mako and Zuko, all made incoherent mutterings of agreement and shuffled their feet.  
  
"Well..." Gonzo started caustiously, "...whaddya guys think he saw..?"  
  
"Probably a piece of driftwood-with teeth!" said Nudge, shaking his fist in the air.  
  
"Or a giant aqautic amoeba!!" added Mako, then more quietly, "...Nyaaaaa..."  
  
"Or an iceberg!!!" Everyone stopped to look at Zuko. "..What?"  
  
"Twit! It's too warm for icebergs!" Mako snapped.  
  
"I ain't a twit! YOU'RE the twit! You land-lubbing SCALLY-WAG!"  
  
"Who has the book here, hm?! Who's got the glasses from years of studious-studying?? HM?" the short man took a step forward, brandishing his book.  
  
"Aww, c'mon boys, no need to be rowdy," said Gonzo, trying to be the peace-keeper. There was a minute or two of silence as the steam blew away and Nudge kept an eye on Mako's lethal book.  
  
Zuko eyed a cloud. "Sorry, Mako."  
  
Mako did the same. "Sorry, Zuko."   
  
"Y'know, they've been up there for a while," Zuko said. All the pirates looked up at the crow's nest again. "Y'know....what if it's somethin' important? REALLY important?" The pirates of the Dragon's Shear mumbled, shuffled their feet again and sighed as one.   
  
Tetra's cry cut throught he uncomfortable silence like a sword though a chu-chu, "HOY! Bring up the sails and break out the oars, were heading Southwest!"   
  
"Southwest?!"  
  
"WHY-?!"  
  
"But the weather..."  
  
"We'll be moving parallel to the storm!"  
  
"WHY-?!"  
  
Tetra broke through the chorus of voices, "There are birds to the Southwest, you numbskulls! Birds mean land," she let this sink in. "We have to take the chance!"  
  
The pirates all looked at eachother with stunned faces, then threw their enthusiastic reply back up to Miss Tetra, "YES MA'AM!" 


	3. The Storm

A/N: Warnings I give to the light of heart and those with no sea-legs...  
  
Ch. 3- The Storm  
  
A/N: The PERFECT Storm! MWUAAHAA! cough I'll be here all week folks....  
  
"Gonzo!"  
  
"Yes, Miss Tetra?"  
  
"Angle us a little more to the south. And Mako!"  
  
"Miss?" the spectacled man gave her his attention.  
  
"Tell Link." Tetra watched as Mako scuttled up to the upper edge of the ship and yelled their new position to the young hero, who promptly altered his course. She could see his patterned sale veer off to their left. There was an ancient sounding creak of timbers as Gonzo laboriously turned the ship so that it was sailing south. This position made Tetra feel more at ease, it meant that more of the wind was filling their sails, propelling them more quickly over the choppier seas towards their goal. Once they got closer, they would have to change their angle again, so that they could continue to the place where the pelicans flocked like tattered pieces of paper in a small dervish.  
  
But now, all that mattered was speed.  
  
The light was turning an ominous red as the sun began to set behind the dark storm clouds, which rose above them like a mountain range of dark fortresses. Their battlements were bedecked with whispy cirrus and their windows bathed the sea in the last, burning remnants of the day's light, Jacob's ladders thrust from the sky.  
  
Jacob's ladders. They were something Mako had mentioned or heard about once, or had he read about them in a book? Tetra couldn't remember. All she could recall was that they were bridges between Heaven and Earth. Were they real? She couldn't say. There certainly wasn't anything that disproved their identity. An angry rumble of thunder bellowed from the sky and in her chest. Perhaps there were angels going to war....  
  
She hoped that they were not caught up in the ensuing struggle.  
  
But as their phantom island grew closer and closer, as did the storm, filling the sky and blotting out all light but for the burning red, casting eery shadows and tainting the foam of the sea.  
  
"It's an ill wind, Miss Tetra." She turned to see Mako again, standing next to her. "I don't like it one bit, and the boys don't either.."  
  
"I know, Mako."  
  
"It doesn't matter which way we go, we can't avoid this storm.."  
  
"I know." She looked at the strong planks beneath their feet for a moment, as if imparting some word to them that would ensure their staunch temerity against the oncoming typhoon. Her mouth becoming a grim line, she looked up and said, "Get everyone prepared! Tie down everything that needs to be secured!"  
  
"Ay-ay!" Mako shouted as he rushed to do her bidding. The crew secured canons and boxes of equipment, moving over the ship with the discipline of soldiers and working with skilled hands. The wind began to buffet their bodies.  
  
Niko was the first to cry out when the first shock of lightning ripped the skies above them, tearing through the clouds like a harpoon through a whale's hide and just as swiftly. Rain beat down with the strength of stone pellets, instantly flooding the deck with an inch of water before it could even flow off the sides, making it slick and any kind of movement risky. Barrels shuddered in their restraints and the ropes and sails groaned audibly, barely discernible through the deluge of rain and darkness as they flapped violently in the gale force winds. Like the smoke and mirror tricks of a man long dispossessed of his own mind, red light flickered through small windows in the clouds that opened and closed like the mouths of a thousand beasts. The world titlted crazily as the ship fought with the sea.  
  
"THIS STORM WILL BE THE DEATH OF US!!"  
  
"RAAHHH-"  
  
"The crosswind-!"  
  
"NIKO WHERE ARE YOU-"  
  
"MAKO!"  
  
"ZUKO!"  
  
"MISS TETRAA!"  
  
The cries of her men pounded into Tetra as she clung desperately to the central mast of the Dragon's Shear, letting out an angry cry. "HOLD ONTO SOMETHING AND DON'T LET GO, WHATEVER YOU DO!! DOOON'T! LEEET! GOOOO!!"  
  
She could barely make them out as they huddled against boxes and clung for their lives to ropes and each other, the winds seeming to try to dislodge them all by coming at them from every direction at once. She gasped in horror when Nudge almost flew off the edge of the ship, saved only in the nick of time when Gonzo's hand flew out to grasp his own.  
  
A flash of lightening gave Tetra the illumination she needed to see Link's sail veer at a dangerous angle, nearly jumping out of the water. "LIIIINK NOOOOOO!!" She made a desperate dash like a thing posessed for the side of the ship, slipping in the water but kept upright by the wind.  
  
When the winds came Link's arm was nearly wrenched out if its socket as the sail tether tried to jump out of his grip like some wild animal, burning his hands as it nearly slipped free. The seas roared in his ears and spray and rain filled his mouth and nose, The Red Lion beginning to fight his control like its animal name-sake. Fear begin to knot in his stomach like a nest of snakes as he watched the bow slice like a warrior's twisting machette through the dark waters, out of control.  
  
"WAAUUGH!"  
  
To his right the dark timbers of the Dragon's Shear wetly reflected the bad light, fearfully close, the storm giving it a power and malevolence and savagery in its violent movements through the sea. As each monstrous swell approached and passed the ship reared upwards, nearly upending itself, and then came down with a deafening fume, a mountainous harbinger of death, beautiful in its symmetry made visible from below, timbers curving like a solid ribcage. It seemed at odds with the sea and the very storm itself, a feuding brother of the gnashing monster raging overhead.  
  
To Link it seemed the upper jaw of a terrible maw as a whistling zephyr, a cool blast of wind that seemed apart from the storm itself, put all of its power into The Red Lion's solitary sail and propelled it at a sharp angle, skimming through the water and flying over the crest of the next roller, nearly un-doing Link when his boat shockingly slammed onto the water again and smoothly skimmed into the trough of the waves.  
  
The light of the storm was all but blotted out, but for a single lightning flash that illuminated the wide, gleaming bottom of the Dragon's Shear as it loomed above him, and then began its swift, weighty descent into the trough. All of the sounds of the storm faded from Link's sensitive Hylian ears but for the sounds of groaning giant timbers as they came down to meet him. First the mast splintered like a mass of fluttering toothpicks, the sail going where it would, and then the ship crashed down upon The Red Lion with a sound as that of bones under a giant's foot.  
  
"MISS TETRA, NO!"  
  
"Get her into the hold-!"  
  
She almost choked when Gonzo caught hold of her red bandana and yanked her out of harms way. Strong arms lifted her into the air and forcefully brought her through the wind and down the tilting stairs into the relative safety of the hold. Tetra fought the arms that sought to keep her safe as she tried to catch a last glimpe of the sea, seeing in a lightning bolt's flash what may have been drifting, tattered timbers and a torn sail.  
  
"LII-III-!" She choked for real now as tears cut off her cry and flooded down her cheeks, a small echo of the deluge outside. She was whisked into her own room and suddenly wrapped with a fierce, loving hug as her protector held her close and sat on the edge of her bed, rocking back and forth, silent tears running from his own eyes as he thought of all that he wished he could've kept the Little Miss and her friend safe from. The rest of the crew joined them in their huddle of sorrow, adding whatever comfort they could give to their ailing Leader, their cries added to the wailing of the wind outside.  
  
The first thing Link noticed was the cold, a deathly chill that reached into the marrow of his bones and made him go numb, and an aching, everywhere. The water sloshed against his skin and soaked through his hair and clothes, his hat gone forever. Shapes whorled before his closed eyes as he tried to keep his breath from slipping out of his lungs like steam through a child's grasping fingers and take away what buoyancy he had, making him sink to the bottom of the Sea like a stone and join Ganondorf and the old King in their watery tomb.  
  
For all he knew it was his time to go join the ancient ruler of Hyrule, but he felt that couldn't be so. He had a mission to accomplish, people waiting for him to rise to the surface....  
  
Link valiantly fought the darkness that began to encroach upon his mind and body and lost.  
  
To be continued... 


End file.
